Generation Plays By Realistic Rules

August 14, 1995|By HAL LANCASTER The Wall Street Journal

You could learn a lot from a so-called slacker.

Slacker, for you old fogies unfamiliar with the term, is the dismissive sobriquet for members of Generation X, the twentysomethings who have been pouring into the workplace. It refers to the lack of drive and ambition supposedly endemic to this generation, the most maligned since the hippies.

It turns out, though, that they're really not slackers at all. For one, they are more conscientious about saving than the Baby Boomers, according to a recent survey on retirement attitudes by Roper Starch Worldwide. And in many ways, they are more emotionally suited for today's career realities than their elders.

Hankins certainly isn't. At 26 years old, the Dallas-based fashion designer is hot - with stores, catalogs and TV shopping channels lining up to sell his urban and ethnic designs. And this has all happened in the 14 months since he left the security of an in-house design post with retailer J.C. Penney.

Hankins represents a growing segment of Generation X that rejects the slacker label and is striving for career success, but in a different way from its parents. Granted, that generalization, like the slacker image, oversimplifies a diverse group of people. But there are factors that have shaped this generation differently.

"We've seen our parents put in 80-hour weeks, hit middle age, get laid off and divorced," says Bradley G. Richardson, 29, who wrote Job-smarts for Twentysomethings. "We've seen what blind loyalty can do."

This is also the AIDS generation, Hankins says. "We realize there are no guarantees."

As a result, he thinks, members of his generation are more willing to challenge the corporate culture and to walk away if their ideas don't get a fair hearing.

They are also more comfortable with the constant change and uncertainty of today's world. "The older generation is still stuck in perks and 401(k) plans," says Linda Kline, a career counselor who has worked with many Generation X-ers at New York's Arbor Group.

If all that sounds familiar, it's because we're all being told to adopt those attitudes if we want to get ahead. So consider some of the rules that have guided Hankins' brief but eventful career:

-- Status doesn't matter. Learning and accomplishment do.

After going to prestigious fashion schools and working for a number of hot designers, Hankins took an apparent step backward in 1991, joining Penney's as a quality-control inspector against the advice of some friends. But the job taught him the manufacturing side of the business, rounding out his fashion education. "Just to learn something is important," he says. He wouldn't do something just because it would look good on a resume, he says.

-- Sometimes it's necessary to break corporate rules.

Hankins wanted to design a fashion line for Penney, even though the store had never had an in-house designer and probably wouldn't look to the ranks of quality-control inspectors if it did.

An executive's rejection of the proposed line normally would have been the end of it. But Hankins did an end run on the chain of command, firing off messages to other executives until he found a champion in Bruce Ackerman, who was in charge of developing minority suppliers. (Ackerman now is president of Hankins' company.)

-- Don't be afraid to pick up your marbles and leave.

Hankins says he felt stifled at Penney's after his requests for a design laboratory and an advertising campaign were rejected. Reading a magazine article about an entrepreneur who succeeded after leaving his corporate job, he decided to quit and form his own company. "We're very willing to leave a job," he says. "We don't want to get locked in like our parents: Get a job, get married, have a kid and you're stuck."

-- Loyalty to a company isn't a lifetime commitment.

Designer Lorraine D'Silva sits in Hankins' office, talking openly about her longing for a job with an environment-conscious company. Someone from another generation might be frightened that such talk about career longings could be the end of their job. But Hankins just shrugs. "We don't expect Lorraine to say, `You're my whole life, Anthony Mark Hankins,'" he says. "We're glad for what she's given us, but she has to think about what's best for her."

-- Networking isn't an occasional phone call, it's a way of life.

Hankins advises people to go to everything they can - invited or not. "Just show up," he says. "You go to one cocktail party and that will get you invited to three more."

He once talked himself into Jill Revson's 16th birthday party when the daughter of the cosmetics dynasty came into a shop where he worked as an intern. There, he made contacts that led him to a design school in Paris and an internship with Yves St. Laurent.

Now that he is an entrepreneur, networking is how he and his troop of young designers build the business. "You may not want to go to an event, but you're going because you're networking," he says. He grabs a fistful of business cards off his cluttered desk - all from people he met in New York last weekend.

"I don't think it's hard to network," he says. "Smile and be excited about what you're doing."